Saturday, September 6, 2008

I blogged below that while the Obama campaign may have been started on the basis of “the fierce urgency of now” – his campaign is now consumed by the “fierce urgency of how.” How will the juggernaut that was The One stop the the juggernaut of the moose hunting Sarah Palin?

We’ve seen several failed attempts from his campaign to date. His latest shows the conundrum – that Sarah Palin, when she was a mayor, sought earmarks. Obama’s problem – he lives at the trough. Thus while his attack may open a small crack in Palin's armor, it exposes the wide chasm in his own.

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This at the Politico:

Barack Obama took his first direct swipe at Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on Saturday, criticizing her for supporting congressional earmarks before opposing them.

“I know the governor of Alaska has been, you know, saying she is change,” Obama said at a town hall meeting here. “And that is great. She is a skillful politician. But when you [have] been taking all these earmarks when it is convenient and then suddenly you are the champion anti-earmark person.

“That is not change, come on,” Obama continued. “I mean, words mean something. You can’t just make stuff up. You can’t just make stuff up. We have a choice to make and the choice is clear.”

The comments were his harshest attack yet on Palin, who sought millions of dollars in earmarks as mayor of Wasilla but later began criticizing them as governor. The Obama campaign has been searching for an effective line of attack against Palin since she burst onto the national scene a week ago as John McCain’s running mate.

The McCain campaign issued a statement that accused Obama of distorting the Republicans' record on earmarks, and hit back at him for pursuing the spending requests as an Illinois senator.

"Barack Obama has requested the equivalent of $1 million in new pork barrel spending for every working day he's been in the U.S Senate, while John McCain has never once asked for an earmark, and Gov. Palin has vetoed hundreds of millions in government spending, including killing the infamous 'bridge to nowhere,'" spokesman Tucker Bounds said. "Just like so many other issues, Barack Obama is all talk, has no record to back it up and isn't ready to make change."

Obama also took on McCain’s inner circle Saturday, saying the presence of former lobbyists at the highest tier of his campaign makes him incapable of meeting his pledge to shut down special interest influence.

“Suddenly, he’s the change agent,” Obama said of McCain. “He says, ‘I’m going to tell those lobbyists that their days in Washington are over.’ . . .

“Who is it that he’s going to tell that change is coming?” Obama asked. “I mean, come on, they must think you’re stupid!”

Obama rails against special interests is the equivalent of Larry Craig speaking out against soliciting sex in public restrooms. Obama's support for Democratic special interests is near perferct. I have only seen one vote from him against any Democratic special interest to date. That was his vote to allow immunity for telecom companies who helped in the wake of 9-11 - and even that was done with an eye clearly on November. And as to earmarks, Obama has requested $740 million worth of them, including, as Hot Air points out, the one for his wife's employer that was followed almost immediately by a tripling of her salary. Add to that Obama'a embrace of lobbyists once it became clear that the DNC could not fund the convention without them and you have hypocrisy writ on a grand scale.

At any rate, to answer Obama, clearly somebody thinks we’re stupid. It's just not John McCain or Sarah Palin. The fierce urgency of how indeed.